Future of GNOME

[Dietmar Maurer <dm vlsivie tuwien ac at>]

I'm a little bit disappointed about gnome. Although many people
implement
programs, it seems that we don't have any new ideas. Most of the initial

proposals are ignored, and I don't see what makes gnome better than
other
approaches (Maybe I'm wrong, but if the only advantage of gnome is that
GTK is under the GPL, it's easier to rewrite QT (and provide C language
bindings for QT)).

I think it's time to rethink the gnome design and state more exactly
what
gnome should be. The low-level part (gtk, libgnome..) is OK, but many
other
things are unclear (UI-Guidelines, software component model, ...).

Just some example/thoughts:

gnome-mdi:

I've written two programs where it's possible to use
the gnome-mdi interface. But it seems that there is no common acceptance
on
gnome-mdi, although it's in the core libraries.

baboon:

What's the state of baboon? Will gnome use a software component model?
(gwp doesn't use corba/baboon).

panel:

OK, the panel works, but it provides the same functionality as one
module of
my window manager, not much more - features like a drawer are useless
for most people. And the menus are at least uncommon. I can't see any
new
idea.

scripting language:

Scheme is a nice language, but most people don't like it (see the amount
of
gnome programs written in scheme until now). Tcl/TK would be a much
better choice because there are so many Tcl/TK programs - and it's very
easy to learn Tcl/Tk.

control-center:

The control-center uses a new user interface. This is bad because it's
uncommon.
If we want such thing we should make it more general, so that we can use
it with
other applications too.

    Tom Tromey wrote:
    >(In a very cool world it would be possible to specify the file
manager
    >to use on a per-directory basis.  This could be done by using CORBA
to
    >look up the appropriate file manager object for a given directory,
and
    >then overriding the choice for magic directories like the control
    >center.)

That is only my personal opinion. Other people like/dislike other
things.
But if we have a better specification what gnome should be, we can avoid

doing things twice.